SPP highlight recovery question...

I still don't know much about neat post processing but i have made a new year resolution that i will learn photoshop and light room and SPP....

So here's the question:

In SPP/Light room...when we pull highlights back...how do we know that ok, this is enough...and now no more recovery can be done. I do it with the help of blinking RED...and when they disappear, i stop...

I noticed that is not a clear cut method...red blinkers will go as you pull back exposure, but there will not be any details in the area...only it will go dark...

So what's the way we know how much recovery can be done, and what are the areas where nothing can be done/detail is lost permanently....?

Well, Nanda... my reply will certainly not bamboozle you with technicality!

Firstly, it seems that you are adept enough with the various programs you have used, so nothing specific.

I just do it "by eye" for highlights: when "sufficient" detail appears I stop. Certainly, in SPP it sometimes means making other adjustments, like Fill Light; and in Photoshop - where I mainly use Shadow/Highlight - I have to re-tweak the shadows and Midtone Contrast. (And sometimes I use the Exposure/Gamma/Offset adjustment.)

But in the first instance, I see "what's available" in highlights in SPP by sliding the Exposure all the way "down".

I still don't know much about neat post processing but i have made a new year resolution that i will learn photoshop and light room and SPP....

So here's the question:

In SPP/Light room...when we pull highlights back...how do we know that ok, this is enough...and now no more recovery can be done. I do it with the help of blinking RED...and when they disappear, i stop...

I noticed that is not a clear cut method...red blinkers will go as you pull back exposure, but there will not be any details in the area...only it will go dark...

So what's the way we know how much recovery can be done, and what are the areas where nothing can be done/detail is lost permanently....?

i hope i was clear

nandadevieast

In SPP as you say, you can pull back exposure until the red warning areas are gone. But also you can look at the histogram and see the line at the very end of the graph shrink as you reduce exposure.

Also note that Fill Light, when increased recovers highlights also - in some cases at -2.0 exposure Fill Light of +0.3 will recover a bit more (or you can use some fill light and not reduce expsoure as much to recover the same highlight detail).

In Lightroom you are doing the same thing with the Recovery slider. But if you exported a 16-bit TIFF file from SPP, it can't recovery any more highlight detail than what you exported. So one thing you can do is export from SPP with highlights recovered (say -1.5 exposure), bring Exposure back up in Lightroom, and then use the Recovery slider to get back highlights that increasing exposure blew out again.